wfn.org | Focus on Nurture, Not on Who Belongs, Worshipers Told

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18-June-1998 
GA98106 
 
      Focus on Nurture, Not on Who Belongs, Worshipers Told 
 
                        by Bill Lancaster 
 
CHARLOTTE, N.C.--Worship Thursday morning at the 210th General Assembly 
(1998) continued the multi-cultural theme of the year, with emphasis on the 
second Great End of the Church, "the shelter, nurture and spiritual 
fellowship of the children of God." 
   Musicians and choir members from the Korean First Presbyterian Church in 
Charlotte, the Sae Han Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, and Westminster 
Presbyterian Church in Charlotte led the service in music.   
   The Rev. Lonna Chang-Ren Lee, designated co-pastor of the Ocean Avenue 
Presbyterian Church in San Francisco, preached.  Lee is a second-generation 
Chinese-American, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, who grew up in 
Indiana.  She said she and her husband are co-pastors of a small 
congregation in a diverse part of San Francisco. 
   She told the congregation about a youth group she had been in as a young 
person.  She said they were down to five people, "three of them leaders." 
But they decided, rather than worrying about numbers, they would love and 
nurture each other.  In two months, the group grew to 30. She said the 
church needs to take seriously this second Great End. 
   She said it was sad for her to watch the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
struggle with the last phrase of the second Great End, with who are the 
children of God.  She urged the church to focus more on nurture than on who 
belongs and who doesn't.  She said that as a Chinese-American woman who is 
young, she sometimes is discouraged because of the way people in the church 
respond to her.  And she said her husband, who is Caucasian, heterosexual, 
married, young and energetic, had to take on her status in the church.  
   She urged the gathered worshipers to "really take to heart" what it 
means to provide God's shelter, nurture and spiritual fellowship. 

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